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Seized Afghan arsenal betrays potential
By CHUCK MURPHY and SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG Outfitted with a hodgepodge of 20th century weapons from World War I-era rifles to surface-to-air missiles, the armies of the Taliban and al-Qaida could never have posed a serious threat to Western military forces. But a U.S. military inventory of weapons recovered in Afghanistan's caves and bunkers suggests the enemy had enough of a cache -- including thousands of missiles or parts of missiles -- to pose a significant threat if al-Qaida had waged a more organized strategy of terrorism. Some of those recovered weapons likely found their way to Afghanistan years ago, courtesy of the U.S. government. "There's a host of weapons which could be used for either combat purposes or terrorism," said former Pentagon intelligence official Anthony Cordesman, who reviewed the inventory at the request of the St. Petersburg Times. "There are not highly sophisticated weapons," said Cordesman, a Middle East analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But, again, one of the problems with asymmetric, or terrorist, warfare is you don't need highly sophisticated weapons to do a lot of damage." Experts who reviewed the inventory documents, provided by U.S. military officials, agreed that the most troubling equipment found in the enemy arsenal are the 5,222 surface-to-air missiles or parts seized by allied troops. A spokesman for U.S. troops in Afghanistan said last week that troops have recovered some pieces of U.S.-made Stinger missiles and some intact missiles produced in other countries. But, said Maj. Gary Tallman, no functional Stingers have been recovered. "We have not found any complete and/or operational Stinger missiles to date. Only pieces," Tallman wrote in an e-mail from Afghanistan. According to published reports, the United States provided mujahedeen rebels fighting the Soviet Union with up to 1,000 Stinger surface-to-air missiles during the 1980s. They were part of a multibillion-dollar military aid effort that analysts say was sufficient to equip a field force of 200,000 men. With the rise of al-Qaida in the early 1990s, U.S. officials were so concerned about the possibility of Stingers falling into terrorist hands that they began scouring the globe to buy back the missiles. The CIA, which helped arm the rebels in the 1980s, declined to comment last week on the success of the buyback, but published reports have said that dozens of the missiles are still missing. "The U.S. has long been aware of the arsenal of Stinger missiles accessible to the Taliban and has failed miserably to reclaim them," said Kathi Austin, an arms-trafficking expert at the Fund for Peace. Tallman said the whole missiles that troops recovered were "Russian/Soviet bloc and Chinese. ... The Chinese models were HN-5s." Tallman did not say whether any of the recovered missiles were operational. It also could not be determined which of the weapons in the inventory might have been available to al-Qaida and which might have been solely in the possession of Taliban forces. The inventory reflects that U.S. officials have destroyed 5,088 of the recovered surface-to-air missiles or parts. Another 101 of the surface-to-air missiles or components have been kept for further analysis and other parts or intact missiles are awaiting disposition. In May, after an empty launcher for a Soviet-made missile was found near a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia, the FBI warned law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for any signs of terrorist plans to use shoulder-fired missiles against U.S. targets. The FBI also said it had no concrete information about any attack plot. Troops also recovered two British-made Blowpipes, which are comparable to Stingers. The inventory does not disclose whether the Blowpipes were intact. A spokesman for the British Defense Ministry said he had no information on how the British Blowpipes got to Afghanistan and wasn't aware of any effort to trace their source. "There are small arms of all kinds available through black markets worldwide," he said. The inventory released by the military provides a glimpse into an insurgency arsenal long considered one of the world's largest. It portrays a country awash in guns large and small. The U.N. estimates there are still 8-million to 10-million guns circulating throughout Afghanistan -- about one weapon for every three Afghan civilians. But the inventory doesn't document the places most of the weapons were made, their ages or the routes they took into Afghanistan. Analysts suspect many of the arms were old and poorly maintained, adding that some were likely seized from stockpiles left over from the fallen Soviet-supported government. Other items probably took a more circuitous route and were added to the Afghan arsenal after 1992, the year the communist government fell to the rebels. Several experts said it is even likely that Afghan or Arab fighters continued to build up their stocks despite a U.N. embargo on weapons transfers to Taliban-controlled territory in 2000. "After the superpowers withdrew from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, several other countries, including Iran and Pakistan, took up the slack, providing small arms and light weapons to both sides," said Matthew Schroeder, a research associate for the Federation of American Scientists' Arms Sale Monitoring Project. "They were clearly a well-armed force for the sort of guerrilla unit they inherited from the Soviet era," said Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, which tracks the movement of arms. "It's a mixture of things from outside and things they got from the Soviets." U.S. officials said most of the weapons seized came from former Soviet-East Bloc nations or China, though experts suspect some of the ordnance and guns might have been copies produced in underground factories in Pakistan. Although Army officers said very little of what was found was manufactured in the United States, experts who reviewed the inventory wouldn't rule out that some of the weapons came from the American-aid pipeline. During the 1980s, the United States deliberately purchased arms from the Soviet bloc and China, channeling them to Afghanistan through third countries to disguise the origin of the arms. The recovered items include a Lee-Enfield rifle, first manufactured in 1895 and used extensively by British troops in the World Wars. There were also 55,000 rounds of .303 ammunition recovered. It is used in the Lee-Enfield. "It may be old, but if you want a sniper's rifle, a .303 Enfield is tough to beat," Standish said. There were also: 420,000 rounds of ammunition for AK-47 rifles, the weapon of choice for the mujahedeen and insurgents worldwide. Before the U.S. bombing campaign began last year, a single, used AK was available on the Afghan black market for $10, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group. 48,741 82mm mortar shells and 15 of the firing tubes, popular in Eastern Bloc nations and dating to World War II. 9,979 rocket propelled grenades and 51 launchers. They are known as the irregular soldier's most powerful weapon. In Somalia, they were used to bring down American helicopters. A Soviet FM radio. Many of the arms and ammunition, including most of the missiles and the heaviest artillery and rockets, have been counted, inventoried and destroyed by U.S. troops, who considered the items too dangerous or unstable to be reused. "Undoubtedly, the U.S. command does not wish to take any chances with such weapons," said Robin Bhatty, a security consultant. He noted the recent arrests in Saudi Arabia of a number of al-Qaida suspects charged with attempting to shoot down an American aircraft at a U.S. air base in Riyadh. But the U.S. military also has turned over some arms, including 1,185 AK-47 rifles, to the fledgling Afghan National Army -- a practice criticized by some disarmament experts, who refer to it as "recycling." "Small arms and light weapons are durable, easy to smuggle, plentiful and often in demand in areas outside the effective control of law enforcement -- an ideal black market commodity," said Schroeder, of the scientists' arms-monitoring project. "Without adequate accounting controls and inventory management, they may end up back in circulation on the black market." U.S. officials are pleased with the number of weapons and the amount of ammunition recovered in Afghanistan. "This country is lousy with weapons and ammo, and it will probably take years to even get a handle on how much is here," Maj. Tallman wrote. "It is actually a very good news story (in our opinion ... ) that we are finding as much as we are. An even better part of the story is that at the local level, we have started to get people to voluntarily turn these things in." Still, some guns have not turned up. For example, the inventory shows that troops found 1,287 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition, which can penetrate an inch of concrete from the distance of 16 football fields. But they did not find any .50-caliber guns, including 25 of those weapons made in Murfreesboro, Tenn. They were shipped to Afghanistan in 1987.
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